Updated 13.09 | Published 12.51
unsaveSave
expand-left
full screen Aid packages are dropped over Gaza City on Sunday. But the aid is not enough in the long run, warns the UN. Photo: Mohammad Hajjar/AP/TT
At least half of the population of the Gaza Strip is suffering from “catastrophic hunger”. An unprecedented situation now prevails in the northern parts of the area, according to a UN-backed report.
“Famine is imminent, and is predicted to occur any time between mid-March and the month of May,” says the report, produced in a collaboration called IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification).
– We have not experienced that 50 percent of an entire population is covered by near-starvation levels before, says Beth Bechdol, deputy director at the UN agency FAO.
The report shows that the aid deliveries that are now made from the air and via the Mediterranean Sea are not enough.
Much larger quantities of goods are required to be released by land in order for the situation to lighten up.